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An Old Friend To the Editor of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN In securing the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN for the year 1919, I am glad to note that your paper is just as good in war time as in times of peace. As the year that I am sending for is my fifty-third, I feel that I am making no mistake. Calais, Me. F. N. DAVIS. The Successful (?) Cotton Picker To the Editor of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Just a few a few lines from one of your readers about that "successful cotton-picker" which the cold and fishy harvester trust has adopted. As Mephisto said to Faust, "She is not the first." We don't know how many successful pickers there have been; but the last one came here in 1914, I think it was, and I guess you didn't overlook it. Any way it was heralded by one of the technical journals as The picker, preceded by a history of the many previous unsuccessful pickers. That picker came from Pittsburgh; at the end of the season it went back there and I guess it must have met with a Boojum for like the hero of the famous snark story, it "silently vanished away and never was heard of again." So we cotton-growers are interested without enthusiasm. A number of objections occur to one reading your published description. However, they may not be well founded, so I will just refer to one or two statements made in your article not exactly correct. Cotton-pickers to be sure vary greatly in picking capacity, but I will not be far wrong in saying that an average negro, man or woman, will pick 400 pounds (not 100 to 200 as you have it) of cotton a day, for the simple reason that they make 5 to 6 a day with wages at 1.25 per 100 pounds. Some do not make as much, neither do wages always run as high. "Six bits" (75 cents) was good wages two years ago. This year wages started at 1 and ran up quickly to 1.25 and then to 1.75. Some probably paid more, but this is what we paid at the last. When farmers begin to get scared for fear of rain, for the cotton opens up quickly and simultaneously ??? a large area, they all bid against each other and steal one another's hands, so wages go up faster than new hands can come in. Hands were scarcer than ever this year, but there are always a large number of city people, especially negroes, that make it a business to pick cotton because they make big money at that time. So there is far less danger of a real shortage of cotton-pickers than there is of labor for other crops. Now when you say cotton-pickers are wasteful, and waste up to 50 per cent of the crop, I can only say that this is pure nonsense. There isn't any of the crop wasted, that can be profitably picked. If a picker does not pick clean, it is easy to see that fact, and he must go over the row again. Besides, there are always two pickings, usually three, to every crop, because the bolls continue to open, usually, .for one to three months. The last picking is called "scrapping," the scrap being of inferior quality, and worth less; so when cotton is very low, as it was up to 1915, such picking is often neglected as indeed it does not repay the labor. The mechanical picker might save a little of (this, but it would do the farmer no good, as when cotton is low that is [just when this scrap should be kept off the market. There is one other point to which I wish to call your readers' attention, as undoubtedly everybody outside the cotton-belt will be comparing the present price of cotton with the cost of harvesting. No less a journal than the New York Times remarked in a recent issue that as the cost of picking comes to only 1 to 1/4 cents a pound, it does not seem to amount to much. The writer of this remark evidently had in mind the price of cotton quoted on the exchanges. Of course that is not the cotton the grower pays \Vz cents a pound for picking. The latter is seed-cotton, to wit, it contains both seed and lint. It is generally figured that there are two pounds of seed to one of lint; but if a grower gets 900 pounds of lint out of the gin to 3,000 pounds of seed-cotton he is doing quite well, and I doubt if he ever gets 1,000 pounds as there is always some shrinkage in ginning due to trash and burs and the lint that sticks to them. So the seed-cotton, this year, with cotton around 30 cents, is worth only 10 cents a pound (this includes value of seed) and in 1916 it was worth only 6j to 7 cents. You can easily see that 1 to lJi cents out of this makes itself felt. If your new machine can be put on the market at a price that people can pay--say S50U--r such that it would pay for itself in one season,'it can be bought and used in sufficient numbers to make itself felt as an .influence which would enable us in the fall to do something else besides pick cotton, and there are lots of things that have, QJ ought, to be done; and if, of course, it can pick successfully--then it may be a success. The last machine cost around 5,000 and I don't wonder it wasn't a "go." Rosharon, Texas. GE W. COLLEB. Road-Town To the Editor of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN A few years ago this writer was much impressed with a magazine article illustrating and describing Chamblee's Road-Town. Since that time nothing has appeared with regard to it that has met our attention, and we just wonder if the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN was acquainted with and took notice of the merits of the proposition at any time. It appealed to us at this time as combining the merits of rural and urban life and would solve the problem of city congestion and country depopulation at the same time. However it would probably be practicable only for the more thickly settled communities. Mr. Chamblee was probably never able to promote the scheme because it is essentially a collective rather than an "individual proposition. It does seem to the writer, however, that right at this time, if the powers that be in Europe had it properly brought to their attention, it might be tested out in a practical way in northern France. That region combines agriculture with manufacturing and is thickly populated, and must be rebuilt by or through Government aid, if not by entire public ownership. Hence we trust the Road-Town may be presented to the proper authorities over there.' NAT. M. PICKETT. Madison, N. C. Experiments on Silver Sulphide To the Editor of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN We note on page 247 of. the issue for September 28th, of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, a resume of recent experiments made at the Bureau of Standards on the metallic properties of zinc sulphide. This is an error, since the experiments were made on silver sulphide and not on zinc sulphide. G. W. STRATTON. Director, Bureau of Standards. Washington, D. C.
